Youth Challenges eBook

Ruth was frightened. Not until this moment did
she realize what she had done; not until now did the
teeth of remorse clench upon her. To marry her—­because
he loved her—­this boy at her side must suffer
this. It was her doing. ...She had cheated
him into it. She had cost him this and was giving
nothing to pay for it. He had foreseen it.
Last night he had cut adrift from his parents because
of her—­ willingly. She knew he would
have made, would make, any sacrifice for her. ...And
she had married him with no love in her heart, married
him to use him for her own ends!

She dared not doubt that what she had done was right.
She dared not question her act, nor that the end justified
the means she had used. ...But the end was not to
be attained. By the act of marrying Bonbright
she had made it impossible for herself to further the
Cause. ...It was a vicious circle of events.

As she watched his face she became all woman; revolutionist
and martyr disappeared. Her heart ached for him,
her sympathy went out to him. “Poor boy!...”
she said, and pressed his arm again.

“It was to—­be expected,” he
said, slowly. “I’m glad it’s
over. ...I knew what would happen, so why should the
happening of it trouble me? ...There have been six
generations in my family that would do that thing.
... Ruth, the Foote Tradition is ended. It
ended with me. Such things have no right to exist.
... Six generations of it. ...”

She did not speak, but she was resolving silently:
“I’ll be good to him. I’ll
make him happy. I’ll make up to him for
this. ...”

CHAPTER XXI

All of Ruth’s life had been spent in contact
with the abnormal, the ultraradical. The tradition
which time had reared about her family—­
as powerful in its way as the Foote Tradition, but
separated from it by a whole world—­had
brought acquaintanceship and intimacy with strange
people and strange cults. In the parlor of her
home she had listened to frank, fantastic discussions;
to lawless theories. These discussions, beginning
anywhere, ended always with the reform of the marriage
relation. Anarchist, socialist, nihilist, atheist,
Utopian, altruist—­all tinkered with the
family group, as if they recognized that the civilization
they were at war with rested upon this and no other
foundation.

So Ruth was well aware how prone the individual is
to experiment with the processes of forming and continuing
the relations between men and women which have for
their cardinal object the peopling of the earth.
But in spite of the radicalism which was hers by right
of inheritance and training, she had not been attracted
by any of them. A certain basic sense of balance
had enabled her to see these things were but vain
gropings in the dark; that they might flower successfully
in abnormal individual cases—­orchid growths—­but
that each was doomed to failure as a universal solution.
For mankind in bulk is normal, and its safety lies
in a continuance of normality. Ages had evolved
the marriage relation as it existed; ages might evolve
it into something different as sudden revolution could
not. It was the one way, and she knew it to be
the one way.